Kiran Musunuru, M.D.
PhD, MPH, ML, MRA
Biography

Kiran Musunuru, M.D. is Barry J. Gertz Professor for Translational Research at the University Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. He is also professor of Cardiology, Genetics, and professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

Dr Musunuru graduated in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard University in Boston in 1997. Later he completed a PhD in Biomedical Sciences at Rockefeller University in 2003, followed by a medical degree from Weill Cornell Medical College in 2004. In 2009 he earned a Masters in Public Health (MPH) in Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, followed by a Masters in Law (ML) from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 2019. In 2024 he completed a Masters in Regulatory Affairs (MRA) from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Musunuru is an actively practicing cardiologist as well as a committed teacher. He authored several books including chapters in Braunwald’s Textbook of Cardiology. Dr. Musunuru has dedicated years to studying how gene editing could be used to treat genetic conditions. His research focused on the genetics of heart disease seeking to identify genetic factors that protect against disease and use them to develop therapies to protect the entire population. In his recent work he used gene editing to create a one-shot “vaccination” against heart attacks.

In May 2025 his work published in New England Journal of Medicine described “patient-specific in vivo gene editing” to save a baby’s life born with an incurable metabolic disease, for the first time in the world which opens the door to save millions of more lives in the future curing many other genetic disorders, ushering the future era of “molecular (genetic) surgery”, a brand new clinical medical specialty.

He is a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Barak Obama at the White House, The American Heart Association’s Award of Meritorious Achievement, The American Philosophical Society’s Judson Daland Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Clinical Investigation, The American Federation for Medical Research’s Outstanding Investigator Award, and Harvard University’s Fannie Cox Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching, among many others. He recently served as Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal Circulation: Genomic and Precision Medicine.